Dead at Startup Lost user.dat

In an effort to get rid of Phantom Shortcuts that would appear at reBoot/startup time, I Moved the USER.dat sacred file from c:\Windows to c:\junk102003 and tried to Restart... came up with a raw desktot screen with 5 default icons... ie mycomputer. my Network, recycle, etc      The START button does nothing.  If I try to click on mycomputer to  copy user.dat back to windows, I get err msg  that there is no format available to see the directories  ..  So I am basically dead in the water.

*is there a way to reboot to dos  and type in a copy command ??

* I can't locate a restart disk(if I have one).. If one is created on another ME PC, will it work on mine?(Dell 4100)

Any help would be appreciated....    First time on this Dell Support... should this be entered in another Forum?   Thanks.... ps.. I am obviously using a different PC to write this...